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Write A Letter To Your Sixteen-Year-Old Self

Saturday, October 24, 2015

A picture of sixteen-year-old me before the Homecoming dance my senior year.

I was struggling for a blog topic today. I was searching through my word documents and came across one I started in 2014 on a whim. I decided to open it and discovered a few writing prompts that I did just to kick start some writing inspiration. They were mostly unfinished and pretty terrible, but I quite like this one. I wrote it almost two years ago, before my big personality (or rather, expression of this personality I had in me the whole time) change of fall 2014. It's crazy how things change in a year!

11. Write a letter to
your sixteen-year-old self.

February 24, 2014

Dear
Francesca, circa age 16,

Everything
that you are going through is not as big as it seems. Worrying about your
future and college is not going to do you any good. It is okay to think about
it, but don’t be afraid of what has yet to come. Things may surprise you.

Things
that you thought you knew are not true. It is not true that no boy ever loved
you. It is also not true that you need to melt into the palm of any boy who
tells you that he does, no matter how desperate you yearn for love. It is
better to wait. So don’t dwell on that too much, either. One day you will learn
to love yourself, and in return, that will allow other people to love you as
well.

Some
day, you are going to figure out exactly what you want to do with your life,
but you won’t know how to get there. You are going to read a lot of magazines
and blogs, you are going to write stories about angst and love and things you
never imagined. You are going to create fictional worlds that you want to live
in some days. You are going to write stories that touch people’s lives, and
it’s going to make you feel okay again.

Some
day you are going to find happiness, not in another person, but in yourself.